


i'm lost, i'm found, in you

by spectrawaves



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Cuz he really is, Furthering my thiam agenda, Its about the fact that love is found in simple things, M/M, Shocked thats not a tag yet, Slice of Life, Theo raeken is bad at feelings, but like emotional, its about learning to love someone, listen all I wanted was for Theo to love Liam and I think thats valid of me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:00:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27217579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spectrawaves/pseuds/spectrawaves
Summary: Love--and their love in particular--is messy. It was always going to be. But it's a choice, too. It's intentional, something they built for themselves.
Relationships: Liam Dunbar/Theo Raeken
Comments: 10
Kudos: 68





	i'm lost, i'm found, in you

**Author's Note:**

> otherwise known as me, projecting™

Learning how to love Liam proves to be an arduous process. 

After years and years and  _ years  _ of locking his emotions away--purposely forgetting he even  _ had  _ any beyond envy and anger and pride--and then slowly letting all those emotions back in one at a time, is  _ fucking hard. _ And  _ exhausting,  _ even on a good day.

And it's not because he doesn't  _ want to-- _ because  _ god,  _ he really does--it's because he genuinely doesn't know how, for a while. 

He could blame the Doctors, could act like the training and the orders and the straight up  _ abuse  _ are an excuse not to deal with his shit and get over himself, but he won't. Not anymore. 

Because he  _ wants  _ to love Liam. He wants to love Liam like Liam  _ deserves  _ to be loved. He wants to love Liam in a way that could topple mountains. In a gentle, quiet way that takes place in the early morning moments before Liam has to go to class. In a deep, wretched way; a way that takes root in his chest and  _ lives there  _ for the rest of his life because he  _ knows  _ that even if by some cruel and purposeless set of circumstances Liam gets taken from him, he'll still live in all the crevices Theo had unwittingly left for him to fill. 

But he doesn't know  _ how.  _ How can he possibly love Liam like Liam  _ should  _ be loved when Theo can't even remember what loving someone looks like?  _ Feels  _ like?

And Liam is so patient, so  _ forgiving  _ and Theo doesn't know how to tell him that that's  _ worse.  _ That, in the moments where Liam tells Theo he loves him and Theo can only offer a small--genuine but sad and not nearly enough--smile and nothing else, it kills him a little. Every time. 

And Theo can do  _ nothing  _ but take Liam's unhurried, easy kind of love and tuck it into his chest to  _ keep.  _

And he tries to give something,  _ anything,  _ back but Liam won't have any of it. 

"I love you because you're  _ you,  _ not because you can  _ give  _ me something, not because you have something you think I need. I  _ love you,  _ Theo Raeken, because you don't  _ belong _ to me. You belong to you and I don't want it any other way." 

And the words cut Theo  _ deep,  _ cut him across the chest and leave him feeling like if he reached up and touched the skin there, his hands would come away red. 

Because they're true, and they mean both that Theo  _ is _ his own person and that he  _ earned  _ being his own person through sheer force of will alone and they  _ kill him  _ with their honesty. 

"I don't know  _ how."  _ He croaks; and it's not an excuse, he  _ knows  _ it isn't, nor should it be, and it doesn't fucking cut it, but it's fucking  _ true.  _ And it's all he's got.

"Do you think I don't know that?" Liam almost shouts and Theo flinches. "Do you  _ honestly  _ think I'd still be here if I didn't know you're more than a little fucked up? Guess what asshole, you're not the only one."

And that's the crux of it, isn't it? The fact that Theo just… has no excuse.

"You really wanna let everything you've been through _ \--lived through--"  _ because the distinction is important, "--define every moment of the rest of your life? You wanna sit there and  _ take _ whatever bullshit your trauma tries to force down your throat? You wanna live your whole life,  _ with me--"  _ and  _ god  _ that one cuts too, in an entirely different way, "--believing you can't love me?" Liam's chest heaves with barely restrained emotion and he looks Theo dead in the eyes, pins him there despite the fact that Theo had no intention of moving--not ever. "You really wanna live your life thinking you don't deserve to be loved like I love you?"

Theo's chest completely caves in and he can't stop himself from crumpling to the floor, his face screwing up where he tucks it against his knees, his eyes stinging. 

Liam's heart pounds in his ears and it's his favourite sound in the whole world, but right now it feels like condemnation. 

He can't even blame Liam for being upset, wouldn't dream of it, because he can't imagine he'd feel any different in his shoes.

And, after what feels like too many minutes, Liam sits on the floor with him, not two feet away. 

And it's here, in this moment, on the floor of his barely-earned and sparsely furnished apartment, that he makes the choice. 

He remembers seeing a snippet of a movie, when he was maybe 13. Some Hallmark romance with a predictable plot and fixable problems. He remembers a line, one he thought he'd forgotten. 

_ Love is a choice. It's a choice we make, everyday, to  _ keep _ loving the person we love. To walk into loving them rather than fall. To love them  _ on purpose.  _ It's something you feel and accept and  _ try at.  _ Love is something that takes work and intentionality, from both sides. So forgive me if I'm not willing to stay with someone who's not going to make the same choice.  _

It takes time, he won't lie about that. 

It takes multiple little decisions, countless moments to  _ show  _ Liam he's working on it. That he  _ cares,  _ and wants to keep caring. Wants to keep trying to love him. 

He chooses to text Liam every day, anything at all, just something to say he'd thought about him. Sometimes it's just an emoji from the depths of the emoji bank and Liam always sends one back that had to be even deeper in. Sometimes it's an unfortunately-timed picture of the Sheriff from Theo's desk in the back of the bullpen, grainy and always at the moment of a sneeze or dropping his lunch on a case file or some other benevolent and meaningless disaster and Liam sends him a series of emojis he can barely decipher in response--and the string is always different, and Theo is always able to decipher it. Sometimes Theo just sends a middle finger and Liam sends one back in seconds.

He chooses to make more curry than necessary so there's some in the fridge for the next time that Liam comes over. Usually starving after skipping breakfast before his morning class and wolfing down a protein bar between that class and his next and Theo knows  _ for a fact _ that that's not enough food for him--or anyone, really. And he lectures Liam about it in a way that sounds like he's furious with him but Liam only grins at him and says  _ if I didn't show up starving every day, you'd stop cooking for me  _ and they both know it's a lie. 

He chooses to wave Liam's printed out research paper pointedly just so Liam will roll his eyes at himself and smile a grateful little smile before giving Theo a quick peck on the lips and rushing out because he's  _ always  _ running late. 

He chooses to run his hands through Liam's  _ completely  _ ridiculous hair when Liam leans against his chest, both of them giving asinine, brainless commentary on whatever movie or show they're currently watching. And he lets Liam melt into him when he scrapes his nails over the sides of his head while complaining that he weighs a ton. 

He chooses to tonelessly sing  _ Could Have Been Me  _ at the top of his lungs at two in the morning, looking over at Liam in his passenger seat, Liam's cheeks red and his eyes bright and his grin fucking  _ blinding.  _ And he thinks, in that moment,  _ he's like the fucking sun  _ and it's true. And in the next he thinks  _ this is what home feels like.  _

He chooses to give Liam rides to and from school when his piece of shit SUV gives out on him  _ again.  _ He complains about it every morning when Liam drags him out of bed a full hour earlier than he'd normally get up and every afternoon when he has to leave the station to the knowing looks of both the Sheriff  _ and  _ Parrish. But he still makes time to stop for coffee and when Liam tries to give him money for gas, he gets his whole hand on the side of Liam's face and shoves him back. 

He chooses to let Liam buy him shampoo when he uses the last of it, and do the dishes after Theo's cooked, and uncurl clawed fingers from the meat of Theo's palms after he'd rolled off the bed to avoid putting his claws through Liam's stomach. He lets Liam fuss over four deep gashes he'd gotten from an alpha during a fight he probably shouldn't have been in, lets him gently disinfect the wounds and expertly bandage them all while he berates Theo for being reckless. 

He chooses to give Liam all the vulnerabilities he's too afraid to give anyone else. All the moments where he dreams about his sister, all the moments he  _ knows  _ he's not a good person and doesn't really think he ever could be, but god he's _ trying.  _ All the moments he can feel Josh and Tracey's flesh around his claws with blinding realism. All the moments he thinks  _ I'm never gonna get better, am I?  _ followed by a vicious  _ as if you ever deserved to get better.  _

He accepts the way Liam pulls him close and lets Theo be racked with sobs against his chest, accepts the comfort that he doesn't really feel like he deserves because Liam is giving it and it wouldn't be fair to him to reject it. 

He accepts Liam's forgiveness and his acknowledgement of all the things about Theo that Theo wishes he didn't have  _ and _ all the things he's proud to be made of; he accepts Liam's gentle acquisition of everything that Theo is, even though he doesn't know exactly how Liam will react to the naked truth of it, but he realizes in the moments where Liam accepts and accepts and  _ accepts  _ that he'd never needed to worry at all.

He accepts the way his eyes always rove over Liam's sleeping face, the way they try to memorize every inch of it, every single night. And he accepts the truth of it when he whispers into the scant few inches between them, "I think I love you."

He chooses to  _ mean it.  _

The first time he says it, it's just under six months after their initial argument. And they're lying in the bed of his truck, looking up at the stars like they've done so many times before, and it feels  _ right  _ to say it here. 

"I love you." Theo says. He says it with conviction, doesn't let himself dance around it, doesn't let himself hide behind half truths and implications like he's always done. 

He just says it. 

"I love you too." Liam says back, and he lets out a breath that Theo  _ knows _ \--from the sound of it leaving his lungs alone--he'd been holding for  _ months.  _

"I'm sorry it took so long." Theo says, knowing even as he says it that it's unfair, that it's a bit of a test that he wishes he weren't giving out but Liam just defies all of Theo's expectations like he  _ always does.  _

"I'm not." He says and Theo turns his head to look over at him, his brows furrowed. "I didn't want you to say it until you meant it." 

Theo can't think of anything to say in the face of that, so he doesn't say anything. He just searches Liam's eyes before turning his head back to the stars above them and twining his fingers with Liam's.

It's not perfect. It was never going to be. Love--and their love in particular--is messy. And complicated and difficult;  _ so  _ difficult. But it's a  _ choice,  _ too. It's intentional, something they built for themselves, something Theo maintains even after he's finally said it out loud. 

And he still doesn't say it very much, still saves it for Liam's ears only, saves it for moments he knows are theirs and theirs alone. 

But when he says it, he means it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the amazing devils song wild blue yonder


End file.
